Border policy as leaky as smugglers' boats

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard last week took ownership of a new record for asylum-seeker arrivals.

She owns this benchmark (5547 arrivals by the close of business on Thursday) because she pushed for the softer approach to asylum-seekers introduced by the Rudd government in 2008, and she is responsible for the proposal to open a regional refugee-processing centre in East Timor. Further, her Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, has permitted the public release of his own department's guidelines for the admission of purported asylum-seekers. This ensures that people-smugglers can brief their clients in advance on what to say to Australian officials when they land, enhancing the odds - already tilted in their favour - for acceptance as genuine refugees. Not since 2004, before former prime minister John Howard stopped the boats, has Australia seen such an influx of people-smugglers and their fare-paying passengers. Gillard and her government are deluding themselves and attempting to fool the Australian public with the foolish pursuit of the East Timor processing centre. This can be seen from the total lack of interest in the proposal expressed, most politely, by the Malaysian and Indonesian leaders she met during her recent ASEAN tour, and the reluctance of the East Timorese government to have anything to do with the project. Rarely, if ever, has any proposal put forward by an Australian political leader been greeted with such a distinct lack of interest. It wasn't a question of regional leaders expressing a lack of enthusiasm for the centre - there was simply no support whatsoever for the plan.By creating the impression that Australia has an open-door immigration policy that applies particularly to those who use people-smugglers and arrive by boat, Gillard has been forced to scramble to house the thousands who want to jump the queue of UN-approved refugees and take advantage of our generosity. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship is now racing the tide to build centres in every state, except Tasmania, and every territory, except the ACT, to shelter the thousands of new arrivals. People are housed (or will be, when facilities are completed) at three sites in Darwin; the Sherga RAAF base, near Weipa; two sites in Brisbane; Villawood, in Sydney; Maribyrnong, in Victoria; Inverbrackie, in the Adelaide Hills; Northam, 100km east of Perth; Curtin, near Derby; and three existing facilities on Christmas Island. The Nauru centre, which the islanders want reopened, is not considered an option because to recommission it would signal that Howard's approach worked and Labor's has failed. Labor is blindly refusing to address the realities of its disastrous approach to border security. The majority of those who use people-smugglers are single men, with the number of unaccompanied children growing. The Labor government does not encourage scrutiny of its program and does not keep data which would enable the Australian people to determine how many additional people are brought into the country by each single male (who make up well over 75 per cent of asylum-seekers) after the almost-always successful application for asylum, nor is it able to say how many people are brought in as family members by each unaccompanied child when the child has been helped by DIAC through the immigration maze. However, figures DIAC was able to pull together from surveys taken over the past decade show that while 56 per cent of regular migrants engage in some form of family reunion, 96 per cent of those who are issued with humanitarian visas (asylum-seekers) will undertake sponsorships of family members. The program is out of control, and it's apparent Julia Gillard has no idea what, if anything, her government can do to rein in the numbers of people who will pay people-smugglers to bring them to our waters simply because they wish to live here.Last month, Gillard was asked by Deputy Opposition leader Julie Bishop to give a basic definition of her proposed regional framework for asylum-seekers and the non-existent East Timor processing centre. Gillard laughed off the question with frivolous references to the Asia-Pacific region but, in questioning in Senate estimates, the secretary of the Department of Immigration defined the region as the member countries of the Bali Process. Those 44 members include Iran, Mongolia, Turkey and Pakistan. The UNHCR says there are more than two million Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan alone. Is Gillard proposing that Australia initiate a scheme by which refugees from Iran and Mongolia, let alone Pakistan and Afghanistan, are going to be transferred to East Timor, then to Australia? As recently as July, Gillard told a Lowy Institute audience that: "We move forward to an effective, sustainable, long-term solution: to stop the boats not at our shoreline, but before they even leave the far-away ports from which they come; to ensure people-smugglers have nothing to sell and so ending the long and dangerous voyages." The stream of boats would indicate that the people-smugglers have everything to sell and a never-ending supply of customers who set out in the sure knowledge that, on reaching Australian waters, they can promise their clients housing, medical treatment, welfare payments, schooling and every other benefit available to an Australian citizen. Since Labor's White Australia policy was overturned by the Liberal Party, Australia has enjoyed an unequalled record for harmonious immigration, second only in size to that of the US. Under John Howard, migration to Australia soared with little complaint because the Coalition government firmly maintained controls on who could enter the country. Those who chose to break the rules were penalised. Globally, the West is under siege from Muslim immigrants who have decided they no longer wish to live in their traditional homelands, but want to take advantage of the benefits offered by countries with a strong European-oriented culture. Unfortunately, as is apparent in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, many of these new migrants do not accept the culture of their chosen country, but wish to retain the cultures of the nations from which they claim to be seeking refuge. Under the guise of multiculturalism, the same changes are occurring in Australia. We no longer decide who can come here; we accept whoever arrives, after a minimal identity and health check. Then we help them bring others, defined by their culture and accepted by Labor as family members, though the relationships would be considered tenuous by the norms accepted of our culture. The Gillard government has totally lost its way, and Australia has lost control of its immigration policy.